Every few months I get myself in a situation by which I am terribly confused and/or it is tangled up in some complicated manner, so much so that I need advice. But where can one get advice these days? Everyone knows the catch: if you need financial advice ask a financial planner--but if the financial advisor knew anything, he wouldn't be wasting his time being a financial planner except to his friends, and who takes financial advice from a friend? So where does one get advice about ones own artwork in progress? If a poet needs advice he will end up talking to practicing poets and practicing poets can't see anything objectively, so, there is no advice except some sort of background noise guidance. But I have advice for poets. If the poem you are working on about is about you, stop writing the poem.

Few subjects, many subjects

I once heard that there are few subjects for poems. Love and death. Well, everything we do we do for love. After doing what we do to survive. But then, there are an infinite number of little awareness items to joyfully ponder, that is, inbetween surviving and love, which often can be the same thing. Stingray at Sea World a couple of weeks ago.

blooogs

Poetry blogs everywhere, not one about poetry. I read poetry blogs whenever I can, but can't find any that talk about poetry. Just schedules, meetings, announcements, stuff, general stuff. Not much different than the poems I read.

WELL TOM, that's the way people are. Most people are concerned with their immediate world, since they have to be concerned with their immediate world.

If you don't have something to say, don't put it in a poem.

Main Street

Locals.

Musicians

True Light

Out in the midwest, an evening shindig as the last of the light fades. Half a dozen musicians sing songs and play tunes, and the locals come out and sit their chairs on the bricks of main street. True light, very close the marked geographic center of the US.

1-2

Now a-days, every time I listen to poets talk, I am shocked by how much they want to belong. They really want to belong to a group or class or something. Imagine Van Gogh or Picasso or Frost squabbling to belong to some group full of wanna-bees, old women and old men blithering on about stuff they know.

NOW TOM, everyone wants to belong and to be understood by their peers. Who else really understands them? In the poetry world, the audience is made of people who write poetry themselves, thus the group is formed whether or not anyone chooses to be a part or not. Relax, be friends with the people who even have the least inclination to appreciate similar values in any art field.

NGTV

There is an old rule: if you are negative, people won't like you. Therefore, it is better to be positive and praise everything, then you will be liked. Human nature simply thinks in this manner. It is a sort of mob effect. Everyone wants to be liked.

What to do? Just try not to draw anyone's fire. What poet said that?

Arrowgants.

Poets do exhibit personality trait patterns. The first is arrogance. This remarkable trait has several major functions, such as to cover over insecurity and mediocrity. Arrogance hides behind politically correct signposts: the poet will not explain their art, they act unapproachable, and they 'network' which means they praise others to get praise back. Another form of hidden arrogance is exposed by listening to the substructure of their expressions; this is very subtle: they talk 'inclusively' rather than 'exclusively.' True creativity by nature is exclusive. But if one can't be creative, well, one might as well be included, so they put on their party hat and say, Look at me! I'm a poet!

I probably sound like an old sourpuss.

Some watch TV, some stay up all night,
their keyboard struck with lines of blue moonlight.

Classic, Contemporary

It seems only poets read poetry. However curious, the general public does not read poetry. At least not on a regular basis. There doesn't seem to be any classical thinking when I read contemporary poets, everything is, well, contemporary, and usually the poem seems to be art-therapy of some sort for the poet, not the reader.

Art to be art must be classical. One more poem about the dead uncle's hat found in the closet and...nothing.
Contemporary becomes classical? Oh, sure, but what level are we on? Let's stay on a high level. Class struggles, religious wars, and culture inequities are not of raised consciousness. Classical essence is to create how the future can be considered and seen, not how the past or present is considered or seen.

When you write, write for the future. If I said this before here, sorry.

Need

There is a need for good worthwhile poetry, and it seems the poetry world, if there is one, seems to be heading off in some downward, away from aesthetic principle (not creating new ones to the objections of the old schools) and toward nothingness.
I read all the major journals today and I don't even want to read another one when it comes in the mail.

I am always amazed that todays trend of poetry, and there are trends, tend to not have anything poetical within the subject of the poem. Once all the trappings of the form are taken away, what is left is some weird garbage-thought, or something packed full of snooty irony, or some dumb half-thought. Why would I want to read anything like the stuff packed into lit mags these days?

I wonder if the truth is that the writers can't actually think of anything worthwhile to say? If you can't draw, scribble.

However, possibly it is best not to say anything: if you do, people will object.

Ego

I've been away, sort of away from art, and to family. I gave no resistance.
What interests me in the process of coming back, reading what people write about poetry, is how much is pure ego. I can't believe how much of what people write is ego.
When you write, leave your ego behind.

No Matter What

No matter what you do, no matter how long you do it, you must get away from it awhile--that is, sooner or later. Only by getting away can anything be seen clearly.
Sleep is the food of genius, and rest is the friend to art.

The View

See the sunset view below? The house sold for $445,000 at auction. The state appraisal is $373,000. We were there with our miserable little bidder card and hopeless wish, and so were many others. The same house without the view would be $195,000-$210,000. So how much is the view worth? Sunsets over water are for sale. So many things that used to be free become expensive in a crowded world. Poetry is now crowding the world. What to do? Where is the value system? What is it all about? When is the last time you read a poem that had and still has an impact on your life? Has any poem changed direction in your life?

Flower Light

An old pen and ink drawing.

Poetry Equals Time

Nice view. Views like this are expensive. Is it worth working really hard to have a view like this? Writing a poem is really expensive, too. The time taken to write a poem is time not doing something else. If the hours to write a poem are added up, say, twenty hours, how much was spent in writing that poem? How much is twenty hours sitting around the house? Add up the mortgage, the bills, the phone, the electric, the internet, all of it, and if you want to write five more poems this month, it is a lot of time. Poetry equals time.

On the Wire

All the poetry world today seems to be little factions divided into groups, each group a network of people who work together to be a part of something bigger and better in the poetry world. Members tend to be belongers, and nestle themselves on telephone wires between telephone poles, rustling their feathers, being cozy, praising the weather.

Some see the door knob, some see the sun a million miles away.

Personal Peek at the Universe

Our own personal peek at evening and the universe. Our silly dribbling words, do they match nature--not that words are supposed to match or be nature, but is there ever a link between our words and this rare little sphere in space? A poet needs to be a nature poet. What else is there? Malls and international politics? There must ten thousand poems about war, and only a handful of poems as to why women are interesting unto themselves, apart from any man.